Returning to Innocence: Meeting Shame

Dear friends, I am called to share with you on the subject of Shame. It is one of the more difficult human emotions to embrace, as our unconscious identification with it makes it extremely hard for conscious awareness to go there. This is due to the fact that, at the heart of core shame, is fundamental wrongness. It is different from guilt in this way: where guilt is about wrong action, shame about wrong being. As in, it's not that you made a mistake (guilt), but rather, your very nature is just wrong, incorrect, bad – and therefore, unloveable and reject-able. It is no wonder that the human ego struggles with it so. Shame in many cases is at the core of the common ego-centricism and narcissism present upon the planet. The quintessential narcissist type, while often appearing outgoing and overly confident, is in fact using a false sense of confidence and ability to defend against the feeling of shame and inadequacy. The codependent types tend to be people who have absorbed projected shame from more narcissistic kinds of consciousness, and so walk around with a more overt self-hatred, or at least a potent lack of self-love. Shame has been passed down through the generations. The wrongness tends to surface as judgment, rejection and ridicule towards self or other. Or instead, projection onto other as the Judger/Rejector (and therefore, has the power). Often we experience the projection of shame onto us from parents at a young age, in either subtle or overt ways. The imprint of shame moulds itself into a fundamental separation from self, and from innocence. At this given time, we all carry shame at a deep level, and still very few get to its core. From our experience, shame can appear throughout many areas of the body. I have seen it appear in the head, heart and the womb. However, the centre of shame seems to consistently appear within the Solar Plexus. I'm not a chakra nerd, so am intuiting the nature of this, but it seems that core rejective contractions are held within this dense centre of the body. Today, another layer of this core shame has surfaced for me. Interestingly, because it has been a deeper layer, I did not quite recognise it at first, perhaps simply due to its emerging from the unconscious. It was a very hellish morning for me, twisted up in a tight knot of unidentifiable non-OKness, until I got out my notebook to investigate what was going on. Just as well that I did. When I was able to recognise that it was another twist of core shame opening, I was immediately able to begin dislodging identification with it, and as such it has had more space, and has begun to move more freely as it unwinds and relaxes. So it feels important to call attention to this aspect of meeting ourselves, as it is SO fundamental to cracking ourselves open even more deeply, and stabilising our self-love to protect us from unnecessary karma moving forward with our Soul Work. The dancing of consciousness in the avoidance of shame can be one of the tricker ways of confusing ourselves, and at worst can create more issues if we end up acting from our avoidance as either a projection or abuse towards self. Signs that shame/wrongness is stirring: – perceived rejection, judgment, fear of attack from other in sharing oneself (whether actual or projected) – sudden movements of aggression/blame/domination or shut-down, often onto a specific person/type of person demonstrating a theme that has in the past caused one to feel shame – a projection of rejection/hatred/fear towards an aspect of reality that you learned to feel shameful about (behaviour, language, expression & vulnerability, etc.) – wanting to hide, avoid sharing or being vulnerable in the spotlight – hardness of mind towards self, as a beating-down on oneself for perceived wrongness or badness – envy or competitiveness towards other, needing to outshine or be better-than (or inversely, feeling less-than) We may find ourselves shifting between any one or multiple of these movements. The highly narcissistic person will likely not feel any conscious self-hatred, but will instead move immediately into aggression, blame or shut-down of whatever outer reflection stimulates the shame. Note: don't take this to mean you are a narcissist if you have experienced this movement in yourself: we can all experience this. The narcissistic type is merely a personality structure that has moved into a massive exaggeration of this expression as an extreme response to shame. Shame disconnects us from our innocence. In right doses, healthy shame/guilt is still challenging to feel, but ends up moving into a state of humility; a recognition of an action that, for example, hurt other, and the seeing that one can learn and improve from a mistake. Unhealthy amounts of shame that has built up over the generations (+ culturally) can result in people remaining fragmented, by dominating/manipulating others, or by giving their power away to an external judge/authority (and sometimes both). So... please keep this acknowledgement in mind during your process, to become aware of any of the responses I noted that may help intercept the patterns of avoidance, and rest right down into that harsh place of internal separation. This is our only option if we are to go beyond wrongness here, and settle deeper into our own embrace and self trust. Like any other feeling, we get better and better at meeting its intensity, and loving ourselves through it. Pushing or defending against those who have caused us to feel shame, while understandable in some cases, doesn't heal the wound, nor does it return us to our innocence. We must go right to the core, and be with ourselves in the feeling of wrongness, for it to dissolve back into innocence.

– Risa